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Press relation with MG and Rover

After reading some internet articles etc...I wonder what happened to make the press go from the comments in the attached pdf.file to what we were used to hear about MG and Rovers in their late years ???

In all seriousness, Rover could do no wrong back then, in part because they had a good choice of models, and the cars were better than the competition - but thanks to lack of investment from 1994 onwards...

Martin you may well be right but then 75 was a superb car, nicely put together and with a fantastic level of interior and handling yet didn't get the numbers on sales...would it have made any difference if B+W had not pulled the plug and left ?

Well I suppose we'll never know...although I'm sure british and european press were unfair on their reviews.
Alex

Rover 75 was pretty much torpedoed at launch by BMW making threats about closing down Rover if they didn't get Govt funding.

People were quite rightly reluctant to put money into a brand that could be wiped out at the drop of a hat which is what BMW suggested.

Rover 75 performance was not upto the job either, BMW dumbed down performance to ensure it was not seen as direct in house competition for BMW models, a nice idea but it shot themselves in the foot as typical BMW arrogance missed the point that there are 100's of other manufacturers all competing for the same market.

Styling of the Rover 75 firmly places it in the "old mans car" sector and from that perspective the brand took steps backwards, too retro. The touring ironically is better and the style tweaks of the ZT and ZTT brought the car more upto date.

It would have been good as a campaign. Something MG Rover never really did. They ran the campaign when it was 3 Years of Freedom. Which was fairly successful, but they could have chucked as much money at it as they liked what they needed was a good enough small and medium car to match the design and build of the 75/ZT. That was a good model and although they had a winner with that, the 75 itself was a dying model.

The 90s were undoubtedly the best years for Rover. They had a hand in every pie really. The 200/400 was Car of The Year I think, 600s were a top class car with style and the 800 was well the 800 unfortunately. The Metro was a ground breaker, even in 1997 when the production ceased, sales were still relatively strong for what was then an outdated, model. Even the odd Mini was still sold. I remember when our Dealership sold one of the last 40 Mini Cooper Sport models (Tahiti Blue/Silver Roof on a 51-plate), that was such a special day.

But with the hiccup of the sale of MG and Rover brands to Phoneix, it was a slippery downward slope.

The marketing by Phoenix was ****. The only adverts I remember seeing was the Virgin FM tv ad, the "We make a contribution to the treasury of over £2m" ad (which, I only saw once), never saw the footy ad. Which in 5 years doesnt instill much awareness. Look at the volumes that say Kia are doing now. Huge marketing campaign surrounding the Picanto and Sorento, allowed enough sales related bonus to design and build cars like the new Cee'd, Sedona and Rio which all look decent (enough) cars! Thats one car company who have really turned themselves around and Hyundai are following suit!

Looking at manufacturers now, what car ads spring to mind that are memorable. Toyota Yaris ads are excellent now, they're on frequently so that they embed in everybodys mind and they're funny.

The Honda ads a year or two ago were excellent and got people talking. Now thats when you know its a good advert when its got the nation talking. OK it didnt really advertise the cars but it did the HONDA brand, and thats good enough to gain a presence in the market place.

Who wants to be a millionaire.
Rover 25 bigger than you think.
Free fuel for a year.
3 Years of freedom.
One with a guy jumping over the ZS and catching on the spoiler.
'Lets take the MG' billboard campaign.
Might forget you're driving an estate.
Match any genuine like for like offer.
Full fat, high caffeine, maximum strength.
Olympics MG Rover.
We make a contribution.
ZR ZS playing Football.

But 12 **** adverts in 5 years is a little pathetic really. And they weren't on very often.

I know it's throwing stones on our own roof but I have to agree on Dave's statement...we had those very good adverts fro the ZR but they only showed them very late at night IIRC on 2 channels and only for maybe 2 months...not enough if compared with competitors.

We could allow media file uploads within our regular gallery, or we could try to create more pages like this? If there was an appropriate facility, as an editor, you would be able to create as many of these as you like...

I quite like the idea of having video files in the gallery. Having new pages for every single brit-car advert, article, top gear piece etc. does seem like it would soon get a bit unmanageable. Another idea would be to possibly have a YouTube (or similar) group and just link to that somewhere?

I'm open to any suggestions, especially from someone with some technical experience like yourself

I think it would be a great feature to have.. I'm just not entirely sure how to go about it.

I do, however, like the idea of having it encompassed within Brit-Cars.com itself and we have the hardware and bandwidth to cope with such a project, all thats missing is the time and software solution

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